There are a considerable number of prior art disclosures of machines for feeding terminals in strip form and crimping the terminals to conductors. Such machines have been quite complex in construction and operation, requiring a large number of parts and being expensive to manufacture and not always reliable. For example, various types of arrangements have been provided for feeding a terminal strip to position a terminal for crimping, including fluid-actuated assemblies, usually pneumatically operated, and cam operated mechanisms and linkages for driving the strip toward the crimping means. Fluid-actuated arrangements require a source of fluid under pressure, are generally expensive and difficult to control especially with regard to controlling the speed of movement of a strip. Prior art cam operated mechanisms and linkages have been complicated and apt to get out of order.
Another disadvantage of prior art machines is that they have generally been operative only with a terminal strip of a particular size and configuration and it has not been possible to adjust such machines to accommodate widely different sizes and configurations of terminal strips. It has been necessary to replace parts or sub-assemblies with different parts or subassemblies, in such cases.